AUT INVENIAM VIAM AUT FACIAM

everything is on fire [working title-unifies the chapters at least], chapter seven

[This chapter is a godawful mess of a rationalization of the previous one. We’ll get it in post! –dbm …PS: Opinions on all things are welcome. For now I like the possible title, in part because I’m getting glimpses into the possible fictional future written about a man living in nonreality. Hooray!]

seven

For a few minutes Calvin’s foremost concern was whether the LabCoats would understand his rather esoteric joke.

…Because they may know nothing about tech, and therefore not understand that seeing a QuantumTuring could render it useless because of the observer effect. …Calvin had discovered that ElectricBlue is the product of that Turing Machine. And he implied that said machine would be ruined if he was.

But he did so through a direct analogy between the Turing and the thought experiment known as Schrodinger’s Cat. If Calvin is disturbed, he will disturb the Turing, which would result in wave function collapse, just as peeking inside Schrodinger’s box would.

As a result: no working machine, no living cat (nevermind probabilities, other-world hypotheses, etc).

That is: Calvin made it known that his slightest effort would cause the Universe of a new generation to un-exist. For the love of God, Calvin had been momentarily petrified with horror after his imagination allowed him to picture The Turing Machine.

That is, “behold, [he could] become death, destroyer of worlds through an action more easily done than lifting the top off a box.

“Oh my God, I’m explaining this to myself! …I don’t understand that — but wait it’s like I’m finishing reading up on this stuff. …Why is this happening? What’s doing it? Am I already Evil-Calvin? Am I a genetically altered monkey in a cage whose bars I can’t see?”

He scowled over this and paced furiously. And then realized that he was pacing, as he always did when lost in thought. Although normally grass — earth — didn’t materialized ahead of him as he walked.

The sight dropped him to his knees, where he could feel the living surface and bury his nose in the oxygenating floor.

He spread out flat on his stomach, arms outstretched, cheek–

“I know what I know because they’re implanting it! Or they already did! They could be poking at my only lifeline right fucking now!

“So what do I do? I have to talk to them. Can I talk? …There’s always the freaky metal web-thing…

“OK so they put me here because it was a substitute for sedation. So I’m awake out there. And I just found out I can do a lot more than talk… Or that I can do some far freakier shit than talk, actually.

“OK fuck it: Second verse, same as the first.”

He sat in what he now called the lotus position, and soon felt and thought as before. This was something he couldn’t understand even now, and that would end if he attempted to.

He heard his “real” voice crash in waves through the OtherVerse.

“Jump back you unsanitary son of a bitch!” he barked at the ever-smoking man.

“I probably checked up just in time, then — eh?

“Here’s the thing: the operation is over. I know I’m stable. Drip a blood thinner for — no. Fucking replace the skull you removed and I’ll take it from there. The horseman simply wants his goddam head — he’s no villain.

“With that on record, lemme say that if you do anything else, and — hey did you think it was weird that I wrapped myself in metal? I was making the point that to touch me with hands posessed of a mind bent on harming me is to be electrocuted like — well it won’t be pleasant for anyone because I forget if volts or watts matter or whatever meaning you’ll… Just don’t make mistakes and I won’t reciprocate, OK?

“So to be clear: Close up, leave, and don’t ever fucking come in this room ever again.

“…But before you do, I have to ask: You all got the joke with Schrodinger’s Cat and the Turing Machine and all that, right? And y’know what? It’s funny because it’s true: Any attempt to affect me in any way will effectively unmake this reality.

“As far as caring for the body, here, don’t. I’m already beginning to understand how it’ll self-regulate. I can only hope the rest of you continue to enjoy wiping your asses with your hands.

“OK, so thanks, fix the head, mind the manners, and no one kills all of us.

“…Granted, all this is quite far from ideal, but we really do have fun, don’t we?”

Calvin’s eyes opened, bathed in blue so brilliant and alive he thought of it as the aether of physics’ past. The nothing in this universe was far from empty.

Calvin was shot through by a shudder of sudden agoraphobic panic mixed with mild anxiety from thinking in terms of the air (such as it was), in terms that must be noted as a great injustice to their subject, as an omnipresent neon sign.

“Time to killswitch this HyperBrain. Let there be — yeah, exactly… a room just like this.”

Sailor Moon dragged him to the floor, which was five feet of variously sized throw-pillows stacked on each other stacked on nothing.

The human anime character felt more like a woman than any he’d encountered in many ways: She was the only person who wasn’t smelly, dirty; who lived because it wasn’t dying after any sense of happiness or humor was gut-punched out of them by real reality.

Calvin’s brain had safeguarded itself from any intrusion, and he felt like a tiny fraction of his eye always watched his biological self… And felt as though this vigilance was a program run by a brain of hardware.

Which would have induced a panic attack if Sailor Moon-made-real didn’t slide down his erection that moment.

Instead he exclaimed: “Calvin looked upon his creation, and it was sooooo fucking good!”